Historically, less-than-truckload (“LTL”) freight trucking services have been rated and scheduled by phone calls to individual carriers or brokers, and confirmatory faxes or letters. As a result, the time involved in obtaining competitive quotes, scheduling the shipments, billing, tracking and confirming shipments has been significant. In addition, invoices, bills of lading and other important documentation have often contained mistakes or errors, leading to further time spent rectifying any problems. Because of the often personal nature of the quotes provided, it has been difficult to obtain accurate quoting services and rapid scheduling, and impossible to obtain a choice of freight trucking services from a single-source real-time network-based solution. In addition, significant errors in billing often occur with respect to accessorial services which include, among others, arrival notification, inside delivery and liftgate services. Often, a customer fails to notify the shipping agent that such services are desired or the shipping agent inputs the incorrect information while taking the order. These types of errors are so pervasive in the shipping industry that entire service companies exist to audit shipping invoices to correct these types of errors. Another error that is common is to enter an incorrect zip code for the delivery location. This again leads to both delivery problems and to billing inaccuracies similar to those described above.
Freight trucking services ordinarily consist of: rating, scheduling, tracking, confirming, and billing. Other related services can also be provided. It is useful to be able to see or generate reports of shipments made or in progress.
Rating the shipment involves providing information to the carrier or broker regarding the origin, destination, and kind of shipping desired. The carrier or broker then determines the rate, often with a negotiated discount, and quotes the rate to the user. The user will then schedule the shipment's pickup and delivery, if the rate is acceptable. It is useful for the user to be able to track the shipment, which is to be able to ascertain the transit status of the shipment once the order has been placed. Tracking services provided to the user are commonly based on a shipment number, which the user must have or look up if the user wishes to track a package. These tracking services allow the user to track single packages, based on the tracking number alone.
If a broker is used, the broker will need to confirm the shipment with the carrier in order to verify that the carrier will have capacity to handle the shipment. Again, this process typically involves telephone calls, faxes, and person-to-person contacts. These contacts lend inefficiency, inaccuracy, and time to an already cumbersome system, but are typically the way freight trucking shipments are rated and scheduled currently.
In freight trucking, volume discounts are often given by carriers in order to induce users to ship with them, and reward repeat business. These discounts can amount to up to 70% of the carrier's base tariffs, and often result in substantial savings to those shippers able to get such discounts. These discounts are not typically available to individual users, other than based on their individual volume of shipments. Sometimes, these volume discounts may be granted to a broker, who may pass a portion of the discount on to the broker's users, or to a group of similarly situated shippers.
A number of network-based shipping services have come into being in recent years. These services, typically, perform the same services provided by a carrier, but over the Internet or other network. Typically, the services provided will be a simple quoting or rating service, along with a scheduling request. No services provide real-time rating and scheduling of shipments or customized branding and reporting by user.
While a number of specialized network-based services have been developed for target markets such as network-based auctioning, retail sales, or grocery shopping, no advanced system for providing general freight shipping services over a network has been developed.
Additionally, existing network-based services generally have a model which is used for providing services. Such a service will be provided with either a single affiliation or a banner advertisement which will be determined randomly at the time a user accesses the service. Hence, a web site or other network-based service will have advertisements or affiliations, but these affiliations and advertisements will be statically determined or based on random selection. In other words, a single web-site or network-based service will appear to be affiliated with only one group or organization, and though it may have a plurality of advertisers, those advertisers may appear as a group or in banner advertisements.